What Is An Affiliate Program?

Many people that are new to the Internet ask what exactly is an naffiliate program.  It is simple ... an affiliate program is an arrangement whereby you receive a commission for promoting a product or service on behalf of its owner. The term “affiliate” is used interchangeably with “reseller” or “associate.” The commissions are paid as either flat fees or percentages of the sale.

Interesting Fact: While Amazon.com is credited with launching the first affiliate program on the Internet in 1996, that has been highly disputed.

For someone just starting out on the Internet, affiliate marketing is ideal because it doesn’t require having a product or service of your own and in some cases you can even manage without a website but we do recommend you have a basic site.

One of the reasons why affiliate programs appeal to so many people is that the logistics and cistomer support etc are  the owner’s headache, not yours. That means you can concentrate on driving traffic to the business website and building your affiliate profits.

Types Of Products suitable for affiliate marketing incl;ude

• e-books,
• courses,
• tutorials,
• on-line seminars called tele-seminars,
• audio or video products,
• and new products get created periodically.

Yes, it is true there are currently  thousands of affilaite programs and products that any online internet marketer can choose from.  these range from  Dental Insurance to Vitamins to Luggage and especially to Information Products. There are numerous Affiliate Networks available (directories that provide affiliate services), the five biggest being

• ClickBank,
• Commission Junction,
• Linkshare,
• Amazon
• Click 2 Sell

The most popular of all these is ClickBank. But, Commission Junction is the directory where most affiliate programs are registered.

How Affiliate Programs Are Paid:

The three most common ways that commissions are paid are per click, per lead and per sale:

In pay per click, all you need to do is get visitors to click on your unique affiliate link. Because these programs don’t require a sale to get payment, they are popular among webmasters who have smaller sites.

Like pay per click, pay per lead programs do not require a sale. You can get paid for sending New subscribers to a free newsletter or by giving away free coupons or reports.

Pay per sale affiliate programs go farthest back in time. Just as described, you earn commissions when you refer someone to the merchant’s site and they buy the product or service. Because much work is involved in pay per sale, commissions are substantially higher.

Other affiliate programs that we will define and explore on this website include Two Tier, Residual Income and Pay Per Impression.